Finding Jean
by dilly r
Summary: Scott and Logan go on a trip together to find Jean and take care of her as best they can. Set after X2.


Title: Finding Jean  
Author: dilly  
Feedback: Very welcome!  
Archive: Here and at my own site madpash[dot]com. Others interested, please ask first at dilificus[at]hotmail[dot]com   
  
I do not give warnings which might hurt the story, so be warned that if you're a touchy person, you may not wish to read some of the things in this story.

* * *

Logan is in the passenger's seat of your car, flipping through radio stations. You give him a quick look, then put your gaze back on the road.  
  
You, Scott Summers, have been accused of having a strange sense of responsibility. Perhaps that is what is at work in this situation.  
  
But you weren't going to let Logan search for Jean alone.  
  
(You use the word Jean, true, but you mean her corpse. It's hard to think of her as a corpse when, in your mind, she is still a woman.)  
  
So you are driving and Logan is in the passenger's seat.  
  
Flipping through radio stations.  
  
Not pausing, mind you. Flipping. Non-stop. Only allowing for a short burst of sound before he flips to the next station.  
  
Flip. Flip. Flip.  
  
Without looking, you open the compartment in your arm rest and jerk out a CD, shoving it into the player. Logan keeps his eyes fixed on the radio for a moment, then looks out the window.  
  
There is uninterrupted music for a little over an hour.  
  
You've been on the road since early morning, when you noticed Logan leaving the school. You'd asked him where he was going and he'd said he was going to find Jean. You'd gotten angry and, out of all of the things to say to that, you told him that he couldn't take one of your vehicles. He'd said that he'd get there somehow and that you could come along if you wanted.  
  
To find and bury your fiancée. What right did he have to do it alone?  
  
It's getting late now. You've had your headlights on for a few hours. You don't particularly want to stop, you want to get there and get it all over with as soon as possible, but you're getting tired. You hadn't slept well the night before.  
  
You pull into the first hotel you see. It's a seedy, nasty place, you can tell as soon as you walk into the lobby, but that's all the better. A nicer place might wonder who they were, might not want mutants driving customers away. This kind of place, the kind of yellow-toothed man who he paid and who gave him the key to the overpriced room, didn't much care what kind of person you are as long as you pay the seventy a night for a shit-hole one bed, one room.  
  
With the keys, real keys, the place isn't nice enough for keycards, you drive the short route to the room and park outside of the door.  
  
Logan is still snoring. You remember when he had first come to the school and he'd stabbed Marie through the heart when she'd woken him. You reach over and you shake him by his shoulder.  
  
"Wake up."  
  
He grunts and growls himself awake with a jerk. "What?"  
  
"I stopped at a hotel. I figured we might want to see a bed before we get there, even though from the looks of it, it won't be the best bed. More comfortable than sleeping sitting up here."  
  
"Mm." He gets out of the car and looks at the building. "Doesn't look too bad to me."  
  
"It wouldn't," you say as you lock the car down.  
  
---  
  
You shower with your eyes closed because the two of you had left the school so quickly that you hadn't brought your goggles. The water pressure is higher here than at the school. You wonder how it would feel if the water pressure was multiplied a thousand times. Two thousand. A million.  
  
Still, you leave the shower feeling clean and marginally better. But you only have the old set of clothes to put on, so you dress and are dirty again. You sit on the bed and brush through your hair with your hands. Logan is gone. The digital clock reads 1:36 am. You hope that he has not gone to find Jean without you.  
  
But, no, when the clock reads 1:42 am, Logan is back with a six-pack-minus-one of Labatt's, which he sets down on the wobbly little table with the stationary. He has one in his hand, half empty.  
  
"Want one?"  
  
"No," you say, on impulse. But then you reconsider. "Yes."  
  
He smirks and throws a cold bottle at you.  
  
The two of you drink in silence except for the whirring of the A.C and the occasional sounds of satisfaction Logan makes when he takes a particularly long draught.  
  
When you are finished with your bottle, you set it neatly beside the bed. Soon, he is finished with his second. He lights up a cigar.  
  
"Why do you want to do this?" you blurt. Your tone is accusing but you're not sure why.  
  
"Didn't seem right having that funeral without her body."  
  
"The funeral was part of the healing process."  
  
Logan snorts. "That's what Chuck said, what do you think?"  
  
"Well, I agree," you say. "It helped to grieve."  
  
"The way I see it, the question is why do _you_ want to do this. If you've grieved and healed and all that psychobabble bullshit?"  
  
You open your mouth, but words don't come out. You frown and when you try again, you say, "It's late, we should get some sleep."  
  
"You don't have an answer, do you?" Logan stands and stabs his cigar into the ashtray.  
  
"It's personal."  
  
He's in front of you now and he bends until he is eye-level with you. "Personal? How've we been spending the last six months? Both of us living like Jean's so dead she's standing right there," he gestures at an empty space near the bed. "Only two people who understand and--"  
  
"You do not understand. What Jean and I had was more than an adolescent crush."  
  
"That." He jabs the air with his finger. "That is what I'm talking about. How long's it been since you slept through the night? How do you still have the _energy_ to hate me? Because I wanted Jean too? I've got news for you. She's dead, we _both_ lost. Let it go."  
  
"Let it go?" There is a burning inside of you that wells up and gives you the strength to stand and push him back. "Let it go? You say you understand, but you think it's even possible to just let it go? You put a wedge between us and now she's dead and you think I should just LET THAT GO? I should kill you for that."  
  
You start to reach for your shades, but your sense is still there enough to know that you don't want to do that. You shove him again and again. Pushing him back. You get the feeling that he might be letting you push him because you know how strong he is. It just makes you push harder. When he hits the wall, you push again, now more like a punch than a shove.  
  
"You think fighting me will make you feel better? Is that the way we have to do this, because I'm more than willing, bub. But I don't do my fighting half-ass so you don't expect me to go easy on you."  
  
You sneer. "Try it."  
  
He growls, grabs you by the shoulders and shoves you back. Before you can react, the back of your knees hit the bed and you go down. He pins you hard into the mattress. A spring digs into your back. You should know how to get him off of you, but you are too angry to fight. You jerk yourself back and forth, not trying to free yourself as much as feel the pain, the contact. He grunts and snarls, you half expect him to bark at you. His eyes have glazed over with instinct and rage.  
  
You shout something. Something about what's his fault and what he deserves, but it even sounds incoherent in your own ears. You yell to feel your vocal cords ache. Something about how you didn't think he was going to fight half-assed, something about why he doesn't bring out the claws and tear you in half.  
  
You fling yourself to the side, your shoulder hits his forearm where he's squeezing your wrist, holding you down. It's like being hit with a crowbar, the sensation burns through your body.  
  
You twist your hips. He pushes down against you to keep you pinned. Your hips hit his hard, bruisingly hard. He makes a strained noise. You can feel his grip on your wrists loosen for a moment, so you jerk against them and he has to hold tight again. His face is contorted into a strange expression.  
  
That's when you notice that when you push against his hips for pain, pain isn't all your feeling. It isn't all you want. He wants it too.  
  
He gets off of you long enough to turn you on your stomach, so that your arms are held down by your own weight. He leans one hand against the middle of your back while he jerks your pants down with his free hand. After a moment, his entire body is against you again, half naked. His dick is hard and he presses it against your ass. Your head swims with fear for a moment that he'll push it in, but he doesn't.  
  
By your ear, you hear a rough whisper. "You want this?"  
  
You should say no, but you nod.  
  
He never goes in. He just rubs against you and you rub against the sheets.  
  
The feeling, like pins and needles, starts to come back.  
  
---  
  
Jean has been dead for six months. You know the number of days as well, but you decided to stop counting them. You decided it was part of the healing process. A process at which you have proven unskilled.  
  
Logan just rolled off of you and now he's on his side snoring. You're on your back now, your legs spread out awkwardly to avoid a wet spot. The ceiling has stains all over it from leaking when it rains. It's not raining now, it's dry out. So dry the lake might have receded some since before. Still a damn big lake. One body among however many floating around probably won't be easy to find.  
  
You want to sleep, but you can't stop thinking: Jean has been dead. Underwater for six months.  
  
What will she look like when you find her?  
  
---  
  
Shouting wakes you. You sit up in bed, not knowing until that moment you'd fallen asleep at all. You can hear the shower running through the squeaking, rusty pipes.  
  
You compose yourself by the time Logan comes out of the shower. His strange, generally somewhat upright hair is hanging lankly around his face. He takes a warm beer out of the case on the chair. You get up, don't say anything, and take a shower yourself.  
  
Once you've washed everything off it's almost like it didn't happen.  
  
You wait in the car while Logan drops off the keys, then you begin to drive again. There is no music this time. Logan smokes one cigar after the other with his window rolled down, whipping around his hair and flannel shirt.  
  
After a few hours he says, "We'll need a net and a boat." So you stop at a fishing goods store. He ties the boat to the top of your car and throws the net in the backseat.  
  
The lake isn't far away.  
  
You turn off the main road and little rocks and other things flick off your tires and ping off of the flanks of your car.  
  
When you can see the water, stop and pull out the key.  
  
"There would be better ways to do this," you say.  
  
He looks at you, then out at the lake. "I'd rather do it with my hands."  
  
Both of you sit in the car, not moving. "She'll look like a corpse," you say.  
  
"There's a reason for that."  
  
"Yeah."  
  
Quiet. Some kind of bird shrieks outside.  
  
"Do you really want to see her as a corpse?" you ask.  
  
"No." He nods toward the water. "But I don't want to leave her out there."  
  
You're surprised he said no. You're surprised that he seems as hesitant as you. Like he's a person or something. With emotions.  
  
Maybe he's thinking the same thing about you.  
  
You look at him. You haven't really looked at him that closely all day. Just passing glances, peripheral vision. He looks tired. "Do you think she'd be mad?"  
  
He looks back at you, straight on. His eyes seem to be fixed just below the bottom rim of your shades.  
  
"Nah, I think she'd get it."  
  
"You're right," you say, and you get out of the car. You hold the door open with your hip and you help Logan untie the boat.

* * *

Thank you for reading. Feedback is appreciated. 


End file.
